Founder Stories ep.1
The wherewithal to start up
My parents immigrated to Canada in 1991. My father, an agricultural scientist with a Ph.D from Moscow, and a MA. in Graphic Design, and my mother, a Ph.D in Dramatic Arts, landed in Canada 15 years after fleeing Iraq as political dissidents.
No language skills, a foreign but supportive system, but isolation. Dad found a living delivering newspapers for the Toronto Star at 4am, while working as a security guard 8pm — 3am. Mom joined him on the route as well in the mornings.
During the day they’d both go to the University of Toronto OISE campus to gain their Bachelor’s of Education, their 4th degree, in the hopes of teaching in Ontario’s public school system.
Where did they find the wherewithal to start up a new life when the home and life our family built in Iraq for generations was systematically destroyed– with no hope for a return.
I’m standing here 27 years later as a product of their diaspora. Iraq isn’t the only country, though it’s been hard hit. Others like Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine… homelands without homes. And for the children of the diaspora generation, homeless without a home.
Our generation is starting up again, and here’s my short story
The diaspora had it’s impact. We grew up in an education system, culture, and environment that wasn’t ours. As kids we worked to fit into the system, and a lot of us made it through, graduating university, and excelling in professions and careers the ‘normal’ way.
Our family was hit negatively– leading to a broken home and real struggles for us as teenagers within the education and legal systems which we saw as alternatives. We didn’t believe we can make it within a system that didn’t recognize and wasn’t equipped to deal with the social, economic, and psychological impact of our diaspora. Mom and Dad were great parents, who did their best to hang on to a connection with us and provide the support structures needed (piano lessons, arts programs in school), while grappling with disengagement from us in a culture we were absorbing and adapting which they had zero experience with.
From failure, and a foundation.
How do you start up again as a youth, as they did? It took me a very long time to find the social stability. I fell in love and married at 21, dropped out of university and worked in call centres and tutoring, while Rusul completed her degree, who herself was also holding down her own job. We lived a happy life, somehow, on $13 an hour, a lot of overtime, and zero outside support.
“We bootstrapped our new life as young adults in Toronto, Canada.”
I found myself lucky at 26. I lost my an office administrative job, and Ontario’s Second Career program sent me to college. I studied technology at Seneca College, and was lucky enough to get hired by a software security startup by the time I was 28. I was making $50,000 a year.
My life changed when I was 28.
I hungered to figure things out, and build the right things. How to solve problems. How to empathize. How to facilitate. I learned the business behind startups, their impact on building innovative products, and how to execute. I fell in love with helping accelerate startups.
I learned UX design, information architecture, interaction design, system architecture, development frameworks, product strategy, and more over the course of 3 years, and moved between startups, consulting, and helping push their growth, all the while soaking up experience from really sharp and smart people around me.
20/20 Experience unlocked.
Hindsight is 20/20, and when you can look back at all of your experience until this point, you can contextualize the lessons and skills learned to how they apply to you now. Call centres were a bootcamp on communication, user research and problem identification, art school and my fathers’ library and lessons on typography and systems design were a foundation for product design.
Our upbringing in the projects, hip-hop, and street culture shaped our critical thinking, quick wittedness, and street smarts.
I inherited a multi-disciplinary set of experiences that shaped who I am today, with all the lessons on overcoming the lows of adversity and isolation, and the sheer will and perseverance that drives successful entrepreneurship.
I think Steve was cool. I love that he did things differently.
A deadline to start up
I hadn’t started a company before. I told myself I’d start my first company by the time I turned 30. Any later, and it would be too late, and I wouldn’t pursue that dream. I’d be a-ok working for someone else.
Any later, and it would be too late and I wouldn’t pursue that dream, and I’d be a-ok working for someone else.
I started the company on July 4th 2013… 8 months before my 30th birthday on March 2nd, 2014. The dream: to build a UX + Design Thinking consulting agency that supports social impact entrepreneurs.
By September of 2013 I worked extremely hard consulting and generated $60,000 of revenue in 3 months. Those entrepreneurs that trusted me with their work were my angel investors. Rusul and I were expecting our second girl, and our nest-egg gave us the security to de-risk the startup plunge.
$100,000 in debt. Student loans. Student lines of credit. Taxes.
We were really starting from –$40,000.
By October, I was at the Centre for Social Innovation on Spadina, with 1 desk. By December I hired consultants, and had 3 desks. By March we were 5 desks with rotating consultants. Futurepreneur gave us a $50,000 loan as a boost, and by May we were 6 people inside of a tiny 200 Sq. ft. office, working on UX design, UI design, and development work with startups from Toronto to Dubai.
- We helped ThinkData Works launch the first normalized open-data initiative in Canada.
- We helped eQol launch the first in-home kidney dialysis care system that led Binh to a $500,000 investment from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.
- We partnered with Eyecarrot Innovations to design and build an award winning platform that tackles binocular vision disfunction in education and sports, leading to a $5mm raise in 2015.
- We worked with Ryerson University to design and build a beautiful portal for the innovation zones located throughout the university.
- We developed a startup acceleration program and provided grants in services of over $250,000 in 2015 and 2016 to help social impact entrepreneurs.
From working with Pierre Seguin on tackling children’s behavioural psychology, Dennis Maloney to empower intelligent retirement planning, RBC on re-imagining the future of how we deal with our money, and over 20 others, our business of services for innovative social impact was built.
I’m really proud to see some of the entrepreneurs and startups that we’re lucky to have empowered, and been empowered by, thriving here today.
Impact at Scale
The most rewarding thing is that we were able to scale our impact through their missions, and the lives that they all cumulatively impact. I’m humble and proud to be part of that story.
Between 2014 and 2015, to give back we organized and hosted over 30 community events through Toronto UX and DesignTO, though entrepreneurship workshops with Ryerson University and their DMZ incubator, and programming with Sherdian College’s IMM programs. With thousands of attendees, students, and many startups impacted, I’m really lucky, humble, and proud to have been part of that story as well.
In 2015, we launched a school & residency program to teach Design Thinking, User Experience Design, and Entrepreneurship. We started a people accelerator. Over 50 professionals, founders, and teams have graduated from experiential learning programs. And I’m humble and proud to be a part of their story as well.
In 2016 I found myself with the opportunity to keep alive a coffee shop on Spadina– and by August renovated and opened the doors to the Ind_pendent Coffee Co-op, a writers cafe to further narratives on impact and diversity by bringing people together through art + culture talks, and of course, our love of Tea and Coffee.
Bootstrapping our startup
We’re blessed, lucky, and proud of this fragile experiment that we’ve built. Though this has all been our side hustle to bootstrap a literacy startup that Rusul and I founded to empower student voice, called The Writing Project.
“Though this has all been our side hustle to bootstrap a literacy startup that Rusul and I founded to empower student voice, called The Writing Project.”
In April we launched The Writing Project in 80+ cities with thousands of students across school boards in Canada, the United Sates, and the Middle East to help students think critically, communicate, and learn effectively through writing.
And we hope that this is our biggest impact.
Waking up in the matrix, a world of privilege
But I couldn’t help but feel that in 2015, I was living in a world of privilege. A world where I didn’t belong. In order to exist within a system, we had to create our own system.
But it didn’t feel right, and I didn’t feel at home. It felt like I hacked into the matrix, that our company was the Nebuchadnezzar, and that every time we ventured out we were in the Matrix.
I face a lot of cultural, racial, and political challenges living and working within a world of privilege.
The startup culture of our diverse city is still growing, and it will take a lot of time to systematically confront the biases that block inclusion from spreading institutionally and culturally through the startup ecosystem that empowers change-makers.
I’m looking forward to pushing for and seeing this happen over the next few years.
The wherewithal to continue.
I don’t have a lot of answers that I need to mentally push forward, I’m still looking for them– and through the past 3 years I’ve learned, a lot. I’ve failed, a lot. I’ve changed, a lot. And I’ve succeeded, a lot.
And I’m not even supposed to be here.
Maybe I need to really dig back to 1991, as a reminder of what it took for my Mum and Dad to make it and persevere in a country that isn’t their home, to find the wherewithal to continue.
If you have any questions, let me know. I’m here to help.
Mustefa Jo’shen
